BACK TO BACK - BASICS
Tonight we will concentrate on one type of incident - fires in back to back houses.
On the 23rd September there was a back to back house fire in West Bowling Bradford. Which at strangely enough were BOTH appliances from
Odsal. Why strange ? Because the proposals currently under consultation seem to think just one will be sufficient in future years.
And to quote the plans
"The areas covered by Odsal fire station are classified as very high risk overall but the distribution of risk varies in each ward and ranges from very high to very low"
What we have noticed in all of the documents in respect of the IRMP is that nowhere in them do they say anything about the types of properties in an area - it is all just varying degrees of risk.
Without a doubt back to back houses are very high risk indeed, they were BANNED in the early part of the 20th Century as they were considered a danger to life if they caught fire. East End Park and Harehills in Inner East leeds have the highest concentrations of Back to Backs in Europe, which is a scary as soon the stations covering the area are going to be further away. And
Gipton, Stanks, Moortown, Hunslet and
Garforth are all to close. And also they tend to be inhabited by poorer sections of the community which again significantly increases the risk of fire.
You could have several smoke alarms in these types of houses but the bottom line is they only have one door - so if the fire is blocking your exit you are basically
STUFFED. That is until of course a fire fighter comes along to rescue you. With increased reponse times, less appliances and of course you would have to be blind (or very rich and naive maybe!) not to have noticed poverty is increasing at an alarming rate and you have many accidents waiting to happen.
It is basic physics - heat rises as does smoke and 9/10 its the smoke that kills you way, way before the fire does.
And in a back to back house - the only way is up when the heat is on!
